The late start to the season was due to the replacement of the plinth of the Starter’s Hut on the West Pier, and until this is complete races will start and finish at the club's MacLir committee vessel.

Courses to be sailed will be in accordance with DBSC Course Card 1, Tuesday West Pier starts.

Alternatively, platonic courses in accordance with SI.14 may be sailed. As courses and starting schedules may be changed at the Race Officer’s discretion, competitors should maintain a listening watch on VHF Channel 74 and observe signals at MacLir.

Dublin Bay Sailing Club has saluted its largest one design keelboat and dinghy fleets on the eve of the 2018 season.

Boat entries everywhere are a perennial problem for organisers but that's not the case for either the Water Wag or Flying Fifteen fleets on Dublin Bay this season.

'Bravo the Water Wags and the Flying 15s who have - very conscientiously – heeded our previous appeals to get their entries to the secretariat in good time', DBSC Commodore Chris Moore told a meeting of DBSC's 22 classes this week.

Currently – at just a fortnight from the first race – Moore reported that only slightly more than 'half of the 320 boats who race with DBSC have registered'. 'The situation of IRC certs is infinitely worse', he added.

The oldest dinghy class in the world, the clinker–built Water Wag, with a history dating back to 1899, boasts 32–boats for the 2018 season to outstrip any other dinghy class on the Bay. Seymour Creswell is this year's DBSC Wag Class Captain.

Meanwhile, the evergreen Flying Fifteen class, based at the National Yacht Club, has 29 boats entered, according to the just published 2018 DBSC Yearbook. The keelboat class has recently launched a new website for its hosting of the 2019 World Championships on the Bay and celebrates its season start under FF Class Captain Mick Quinn at a pre–season reception at the East Pier Club on April 19th.

The concrete walled plinth which has been supporting the West Pier Hut since DBSC moved to that location in 1968, was demolished during the first week-end of March and totally swept into the sea by the force of the great storm and blizzard. Not one solitary concrete block was left behind. DBSC are enormously glad they didn’t leave the Hut on station last winter, as they have occasionally had to do in the past for financial reasons.

DBSC's first Tuesday race is a bare fortnight away, on the 24th April, and the first Thursday race on the 26th and the first Saturday race on the 28th April so the race is on to get the hut back in situ as soon as possible.

The club is one of the largest yacht racing club's in Europe catering for over 320 boats in 22 different classes every week from April to September.

Photos below illustrate what has happened.

Above: The concrete plinth after the Hut was lifted last October. and (below) taken the morning after the storm the granite base has been entirely swept clean Photos: courtesy DBSC

Plans were immediately drawn up for a replacement but getting it all in place takes time. What the weight of engineering opinion tells the club is that we should replace it with an open-work steel frame that would more easily stand up to the impact of the waves. It would be a temporary structure and removable if needs be.

With the start of the season just a fortnight away DBSC are resigned to accept that all will not be in position for racing on the last week of April. 'Perhaps so, but we have plans in place if it’s not' Club Commodore Chris Moore told a meeting of DBSC Class Captains this week.

DBSC Marks have been laid for the Summer racing season Photo: Afloat.ie

Moore also informed the gathering: 'We don’t foresee at this stage any insuperable problem in starting the season. Thursday racing will be fine because we don’t use the Hut on Thursdays. For Tuesday racing there would be no problem either because we can avail of MacLir, put the volunteers and the race officer on board and use platonic courses. .. Which, often as not, she does anyway.

DBSC Committee Vessel Freebird Photo Afloat.ie

The situation on Saturday racing is more complicated. The programme usually envisages three starting locations – that of the Green fleet, to which the Freebird is allotted, and the Hut and MacLir, between which the Red and Blue fleets alternate. With the Hut not available, we could lease the RIYC committee boat, moor it near where the Hut would normally be and carry on as before. There are one or two complicating factor here and it might be preferable to use another option: start and finish both the red and blue fleets together from Maclir, using the Blue fleet Saturday course card.

We don’t consider that this would impose an undue burden on committee boat personnel – just three starts more than what they are accustomed to".